Every marketer tells a story. And if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche Cayenne is vastly superior to a $36,000 VW Touareg, which is virtually the same car. We believe that $225 Pumas will make our feet feel better, and look cooler, than $20 no-names...and believing it makes it true.

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

What do Starbucks and JetBlue and KrispyKreme and Apple and DutchBoy and Kensington and Zespri and Hard Candy have that you don't? How do they continue to confound critics and achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind former tried-and true brands to gasp their last? Face it, the checklist of tired P's marketers have used for decades to get their product noticed - Pricing, Promotion, Publicity, to name a few - aren't working anymore.

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

Tribes are groups of people aligned around an idea, connected to a leader and to each other. Tribes make our world work, and always have. The new opportunity is that it's easier than ever to find, organize, and lead a tribe. The Web has enabled an explosion of all kinds of tribes - and created shortage of people to lead them. This is the growth industry of our time. Tribes will help you understand exactly what's at stake, and why YOU can and should lead a tribe of your own.

Leap First: Creating Work That Matters

Recorded in an intimate gathering of aspiring entrepreneurs, writers, and leaders, Leap First teaches us 49 essential principles, practices, and life lessons that have helped Seth the most in his own work and life. More than an audiobook or keynote speech, each track here presents a carefully chosen catalyst intended to trigger our own passion and insight with each listening.

The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?

In his bravest and most challenging book yet, Seth Godin shows how we can thrive in an economy that rewards art, not compliance. He explains why true innovators focus on trust, remarkability, leadership, and stories that spread. And he makes a passionate argument for why you should be treating your work as art. Art is not a gene or a specific talent. It's an attitude, available to anyone who has a vision that others don't, and the guts to do something about it.

The Dip

Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out exciting and fun. Then it gets harder and less fun, until it hits a low point: really hard, and not much fun at all. And then you find yourself asking if the goal is even worth the hassle. Maybe you're in a Dip: a temporary setback that you will overcome if you keep pushing. But maybe it's really a Cul-de-Sac, which will never get better, no matter how hard you try.

Free Prize Inside!: The Next Big Marketing Idea

Purple Cow taught marketers the value of standing out from the herd, which is how companies like Krispy Kreme and JetBlue made it big. But it left readers hungry for more: How do you actually think up new Purple Cows? And how do you get them adopted by risk-averse Brown Cow companies? Free Prize Inside delivers those answers and much more.

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

There used to be two teams in every workplace: management and labor. Now there’s a third team, the linchpins. These people invent, lead (regardless of title), connect others, make things happen, and create order out of chaos. They figure out what to do when there’s no rule book. They delight and challenge their customers and peers. They love their work, pour their best selves into it, and turn each day into a kind of art.

We Are All Weird: The Myth of Mass and the End of Compliance

We Are All Weird is a celebration of choice, of treating different people differently and of embracing the notion that everyone deserves the dignity and respect that comes from being heard. The book calls for end of "mass" and for the beginning of offering people more choices, more interests, and giving them more authority to operate in ways that reflect their own unique values.

Poke the Box

We send our kids to school and obsess about their test scores, their behavior and theirability to fit in. We post a help wanted ad and look for experience, famous colleges and a history of avoiding failure. We invest in companies based on how they did last quarter, not on what they’re going to do tomorrow. So why are we surprised when it all falls apart? Our economy is not static, but we act as if it is. Your position in the world is defined by what you instigate, how you provoke, and what you learn from the events you cause. In a worldfilled with change, that’s what matters - your ability to create and learn from change.

The Big Moo: Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable

The Big Moo is a simple audiobook in the tradition of Fish and Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. Instead of lecturing you, it tells stories that stick to your ribs and light your fire. It will help you to create a culture that consistently delivers remarkable innovations.

Meatball Sundae

New Marketing, whose tools include things like MySpace, You Tube, Web sites, permission marketing, cable TV, and viral techniques, is reshaping our world. But many companies try to use the tools without first getting their organization and products in sync with them. The result: what Seth Godin calls a "meatball sundae". A big, ineffective mess.

Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less

How do you cut through the noise, commotion, and bad information that is right now cluttering up your customers' digital space? Epic Content Marketing. One of the world's leading experts on content marketing, Joe Pulizzi explains how to draw prospects and customers in by creating information and content they actually want to engage with. No longer can we interrupt our customers with mediocre content (and sales messages) our customers don't care about. Epic Content Marketing takes you step by step through the process of developing stories that inform and entertain and compel customers to act - without actually telling them to.

Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal

When it comes to delivering a pitch, Oren Klaff has unparalleled credentials. Over the past 13 years, he has used his one-of-a-kind method to raise more than $400 million - and now, for the first time, he describes his formula to help you deliver a winning pitch in any business situation. Whether you’re selling ideas to investors, pitching a client for new business, or even negotiating for a higher salary, Pitch Anything will transform the way you position your ideas. According to Klaff, creating and presenting a great pitch isn’t an art - it’s a simple science.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

As Al Ries and Jack Trout - the world-renowned marketing consultants and best-selling authors of Positioning - note, you can build an impressive airplane, but it will never leave the ground if you ignore the laws of physics, especially gravity. Why then, they ask, shouldn’t there also be laws of marketing that must be followed to launch and maintain winning brands? In The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Ries and Trout offer a compendium of 22 innovative rules for understanding and succeeding in the international marketplace.

Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Formula to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy...Create a Mass of Raving Fans...and Take Any Business to the Next Level

The "mind-reading" system that is revolutionizing online business. Do you know how to find out what people really want to buy? (Not what you think they want, not what they say they want, but what they really want?) The secret is asking the right questions - and the right questions are not what you might expect. Ask is based on the compelling premise that you should never have to guess what your prospects and customers are thinking.

Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising

Best-selling author Ryan Holiday, the acclaimed marketing guru for American Apparel and many bestselling authors and multiplatinum musicians, explains the new rules and provides valuable examples and case studies for aspiring growth hackers. Whether you work for a tiny start-up or a Fortune 500 giant, if you're responsible for building awareness and buzz for a product or service, this is your road map.

Contagious: Why Things Catch On

Why do some products get more word of mouth than others? Why does some online content go viral? Word of mouth makes products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. It's more influential than advertising and far more effective. Can you create word of mouth for your product or idea? According to Berger, you can. Whether you operate a neighborhood restaurant, a corporation with hundreds of employees, or are running for a local office for the first time, the steps that can help your product or idea become viral are the same.

The Unwritten Laws of Business

Success in one's career, and in one's life, depends fundamentally on communication, interpersonal skills, integrity, leadership, decorum, and personal and professional responsibility. By following the guidelines outlined in the book, new graduates and seasoned managers alike will learn how to master and apply these skills.

Publisher's Summary

Every marketer tells a story. And if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche Cayenne is vastly superior to a $36,000 VW Touareg, which is virtually the same car. We believe that $225 Pumas will make our feet feel better, and look cooler, than $20 no-names...and believing it makes it true.

Successful marketers don't talk about features or even benefits. Instead, they tell a story. A story we want to believe.

This is a book about doing what consumers demand; painting vivid pictures that they choose to believe. Every organization, from nonprofits to car companies, from political campaigns to wineglass blowers, must understand that the rules have changed (again). In an economy where the richest have an infinite number of choices (and no time to make them), every organization is a marketer and all marketing is about telling stories.

Marketers succeed when they tell us a story that fits our worldview, a story that we intuitively embrace and then share with our friends. Think of the Dyson vacuum cleaner or the iPod.

But beware: If your stories are inauthentic, you cross the line from fib to fraud. Marketers fail when they are selfish and scurrilous, when they abuse the tools of their trade and make the world worse. That's a lesson learned the hard way by telemarketers and Marlboro.

This is a powerful book for anyone who wants to create things people truly want as opposed to commodities that people merely need.

This is a must be read before writing your next marketing plan or investing in any marketing activities. With this simple, practical wisdom you will gain greater results.

Seth has presented a clear, coherent definition of the core of what marketing is all about. All great marketing is based on the principle Seth explains with such clarity and simplicity: telling stories.

There is no preaching in this book. It is a story about marketing. All good stories comes from the heart. As Seth explains your story in all your marketing must be authentic. Hearing Seth tell his story about marketing you realise just how much he understands the importance of the subject to all marketers. When people express things with such authenticity it can easily be misread as preaching.

A good companion to fully understanding this very important basis of marketing in greater detail I would suggest you also listen to, "The 4 Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz also available here at Audible.

Another Audible book that touches on this subject, and is fiction, is "Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit" by Daniel Quinn

It seems some people were offended by the message of this program. Probably because the book exposes how a good story can make you really believe and commit to something whether the story is true or not. The book says that once we decide to believe a story that our brains will do anything to continue to believe it. The book goes on with examples of how and why stories have worked and spread. I have a feeling that the low scoring people were somehow offended due to their own personal beliefs that Seth must have commented on. I only give it a four because its not a complete marketing program. The message is excellent and very revealing.

I'm on the third listen of this, and I'd imagine I'll listen to it a few more times to internalize the depth of what he is saying. As a dyed in the wool conservative, Seth really does show his colors, but also gives credit where credit is due, for both parties. In fact, I found them very relevant and helpful in a modern context of how to "tell a story".

he goes through the early days, to the "golden age" of marketing, and the modern changes and power of marketing and "telling a story".

I'm ordering the rest of his books. It's changed my mindset about marketing. This audiobook spawned what I think are going to be very profitable ideas and approaches to marketing. Time will tell, but overall a great insight.

Seth offers some very useful insight into what works in marketing communications today and offers some good advice for getting customers to notice your product. It's all about experience and what they believe, not truth or facts or features and benefits. I've used his ideas successfully to structure some recent marketing campaigns.

Only downside was hearing Seth "reading" his book - would have loved to hear him deliver it more impromptu. If you can forgive this - the creator of the "Purple Cow" brings a highly provocative and yet totally logical idea. Swap out "Liars" for "Storytellers", and you've got the story line. Have listened to it twice, will listen another couple of times at least and brainstorm further. Very stimulating.

Don't LISTEN to this audiobook. If you are interested in what Seth has to say, READ the ACTUAL BOOK. Seth has a horrible reading voice. Every other sentence he pauses and you can hear the saliva swishing around in his mouth as he prepares for the next sentence. Every time this happens I stop comprehending what he's saying and focus on the disgusting noises he's making. I wish I could review this audiobook on the merits of the content, but unfortunately I was so distracted by Seth's terrible diction and smacking that I couldn't comprehend half of what was said. I still intend to read the book because people tell me it's good; I just hate that I wasted the money here first. I don't understand why Seth didn't pay a voice over professional to read his book... or at the very least pay to have it professionally produced and remove the nauseating noises he makes while reading.

From the title of this book you that Seth Godin is telling you to lie as a marketer but he's not, he's merely telling you to use personal interest stories in your marketing. That testimonials and good stories about the product really do make a difference to your bottom. If you look at story telling throughout time, people always exaggerate and add little bits on but it is these exaggerations and add ons that make a story memorable. Being memorable is what you have to do

The only thing I would take away from this book is that the key ideas are heavily repeated. It is however extremely well written. If you haven't read any new ideas on marketing I would suggest all of Seth Godin's books as a basis and use his recommended reading for further study.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Mr.Ian

1/21/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Remarkable Seth Godin."

What a fantastic book. Bought on audible so I could listen when travelling and working out. Thank you Seth for writing such an amazing book. Marketing is so simple when you explain it. Too many people make it difficult. Cannot recommend highly enough. BUY THIS BOOK!

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Colin

London, United Kingdom

1/17/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"eye opener"

a must read for anyone interested in marketing. marketing can have a massive impact on a business and this sets the stage for people within the industry and those who want their business to expand.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Jingfang

SLOUGH, United Kingdom

4/24/13

Overall

"A single-minded idea, a great principle"

Working as a marketeer myself, I find many points raised in this book inspiring and applicable in my daily work. The author touched on many aspects of marketing in an engaging and memorable way. I would say my 'gut instinct' about marketing has been positively strengthened after listening to this book.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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